High Button Shoe
August
...it is 9:30am, and I just got in from my "farming", which is tending my gourd crop, and watering plants stuck here and there. This mornings waterings also including turning the hose on myself as when I got up shortly after 6, it was already almost 80 degrees and predicts to be above 95 again today, with the heat index of over 104-110. My contacts are stuck to the back of my eyes, and everything else is 'stuck' too. I suppose it is just as hot where you are, so your sympathy for me is lost, but I thought I would mention it, just in case you were so inclined to feel some pity on me. I have completely given up on a hair do! Trying to think how I can come "fresh" from the barn sale on Saturday to an upscale wedding reception is totally beyond my scope of thought. Perhaps I will just send Ron to the festivities while I sit on the soaker hose. Sounds like a plan to me. If you have read these letters for a while, you know my plans are often wide range, and go from plan A to plan R at any given time.As I can't venture too far from the fans I have rigged up in every room, (Ron says he can see the electric poles pulsating) I am making some headway on going thru boxes. I know. You didn't think I would keep with that, did you? Ha. Well, I AM moving at snail pace, but still plugging away at it. I have come to the conclusion that cleaning out and organizing more often than not, simply involves moving something from one place to another. I should have paid more attention to that Oprah or Martha segment on how to organize and declutter your home. You cleaned one place and made a mess someplace else (my practice, NOT theirs). Or so it seems to be going for me. I have managed to actually throw away some things, but there is still that nagging thought in the back of my head telling me... you might need that. So I need to work with more focus. Focus, of course, being on that left side of my list in January, just below discipline, organization, resolution, and several other negative aspects of my personality. However, I am trying. If you can imagine the heat in the pole barn, that's where I will have to be the rest of the week, taking more things from the shop and basements to the barn for the sale this weekend. Like ANYbody is seriously going to go shopping in a BARN in this heat! But I am advertised to do this, so do it I guess I will.My gourds in the garden, by the way, are coming along and so far no varmits have attacked them. They do wait until the fruits of my labor are almost ready for harvest before they destroy the crop, so I suppose I have another month or so of gazing over my farming. My herb garden does not look so great. Last year it was magnificent. My gardens, always somewhat wild and unstructured, are much more so this year, and not in a pleasant fashion. The sweet annie has a mind of its own, and why on earth I planted about a dozen of the gourd plants inside the fences is beyond me. Reminder to self: DON'T do that next year. Their little tendrils are climbing up and around everything in the garden and taking it over. Gay Feather and Cone Flowers wrapped in little spiraling tendrils are not quite as attractive as if they weren't. I did make a half thought plan to put down at least 3 of my old bricks EACH day for the lovely winding path thru the garden, thinking at least that way I would be finished by Christmas perhaps.... but I still only have the 9 done I originally did. Any hope of following Ron's "design" is pretty much fruitless as I see the grass has completely grown over his pattern for me to follow. And one bag of something I bought to put down in the garden to improve the soil, still sits there all slumped over and unrecognizable. You would think I could at least get THAT spread somewhere. OK. I will do that today. The bag that is. Not the bricks.While I am firmly attached to the fan in the dining room, I have been drawing out projects. You can see them now on http://www.highbuttonshoe.net/newest.htm They will be shown later today on www.rantingraven.com when it gets released as it always does on the 1st of the month. We have witches, pumpkins, and fall cards for you to look at! Many more things are in the works. AND IF I survive the weekend in the barn, next week I start on the witches shoes. I bought the interfacing and have been scrutinizing it closely, and will start with a small piece for starters, remembering vividly my errors of last fall. If you have read my letter from last September you already know what a hair brained adventure that was! Hopefully it will have cooled off some by then, as heat, humidity, interfacing, a hot iron, and all those pattern pieces are not a good mix. Also, as I currently have no bids on the items on eBay (no surprise there!), they will go for sale on the website instead.Occasionally in life, we are given the opportunity to witness non every day occurrences. Saturday while chained to that fan in the dining room, I happened to glance out the sliding door and noticed one of the female turkeys sitting in the shade of a big tree in the yard only steps away from the hay field that butts right up to the yard. I watched her on and off and when she got up I marveled at 7 of the tiniest baby turkeys I had ever seen before. Probably only a couple days old. They scampered around close to her as they do, and she walked off several feet into the tall hay. Ron came in for coffee and we watched her, as you could occasionally see her head bob up and down in the hay field. The man cutting our hay in other fields, ran the haybine over that field that evening and finished just before dark.Sunday morning we sat on the porch having coffee and the lone female came in to eat what we feed them and she always jumps up in the big bird bath, drinks, and she is the one who poops in it after she drinks, so we know her. We never gave it much thought until a few minutes later when we saw her out in the hay windrows walking slowing back and forth, right where we had watched her the day before. It dawned on us what had happened. Ronnie went out and walked thru the rows of hay. He found 2 dead babies, and one little tiny live one. He had survived the night with heavy dew, and his mother had missed him when she walked thru that very spot searching. Ronnie cupped him in his hands and brought him to the house. We got a box and put some grass, an old washcloth, some water and food in jar lids and hoped we could save him. We had to go to town, so left him outside on the front porch bench. When we got back a couple hours later, he still wasn't very perky and we assumed he would die. I came in to do dishes, and Ronnie worked just off the porch putting new chips down, when he kept hearing this insistent noise. The turkey baby had livened up. And he wanted some attention. I brought the box into the kitchen, and put it on the bar stool so he could see me. He walked on feet getting more steady and loudly proclaimed himself. If you picked him up, he would immediately go to sleep on your chest. Put him back in the box asleep and he was instantly awake and making a ruckus again. This went on for a while. I would bend over the box and get my face close and talk to him and he would look right up at me and "talk". Finally I figured he needed a nap again and took him out on the front porch and sat in the wicker chair with him where he promptly went to sleep. And in walked his mother. I put little guy down on the porch to wake him up, and he started squawking again. She jerked her head and came running. It took several minutes of him loudly talking, just off the pavers where I put him, and her equally loudly talking only feet away from him. She kept moving away from him, which about broke my heart. But in time, he would follow her, on very unsteady legs, and then would have to sit down in the grass for a while. She continued to come back closer to him and after what seemed like forever, they went together to the east pines, where we had harvested off those big trees, so the undergrowth is plush and full. I think I barely breathed the entire time. I had wondered how on earth I was going to get anything done, playing mama to a tiny tiny turkey baby. We never did find the other 4. But we were able to save one, and for the new mama, who spent one night with no babies left, she at least has one. Although I am convinced little turkey was fastly beginning to think I was his mama. What pure joy those few hours with him were. To hold something so small and wild on your chest and have him look right into your eyes, ah, it was wonderful!! BrunieMae (www.saltboxfarm.com) just mailed me something that says, it is those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular. My turkey baby was just one happening!So, check out the website, check out ranting raven. Goodest friend, Miss Elspeth of PineBerryLane should have something up too. Her work is always outstanding. So take a look at her exhibit too.Thanks for asking to be a part of the farm.in fond regard, Tilda